1. The Field of the Invention
This application relates to optical transmitters.
2. The Relevant Technology
In optical communication systems, it is important that optical signals propagate through dispersive optical fiber without being severely distorted. The quality of a transmitted digital signal may be characterized by measuring the bit error rate (BER) of the signal in a receiver after propagation through a length of fiber and by determining the optical signal-to-noise ratio (OSNR) required at the receiver to obtain a certain BER, typically around 10−9 This OSNR is then compared with the OSNR required to obtain the same BER directly at the output of the transmitter, and the ratio of these two levels is called the dispersion penalty, which is often expressed in decibels (dB). The largest dispersion penalty that a fiber optic transmission system can tolerate without significant performance degradation is typically between 1 and 2 dB.
The amount of group-velocity dispersion (GVD) at which the dispersion penalty reaches the allowed value depends on the transmitted data rate and the modulation format. At a data rate of 10 Gb/s, for example, binary on-off keyed optical signals in NRZ format typically can tolerate up to about 1400 ps/nm GVD without incurring a dispersion penalty of more than 1 dB, thus allowing transmission over about 80 km of standard single-mode fiber at 1550 nm wavelength without needing optical or electrical dispersion compensation, whereas under the same conditions optical duobinary signals and signals generated by laser transmitters as described in U.S. patent application Ser. No. 10/289,944, filed on Nov. 6, 2002, application number US2005000037718, can tolerate accumulated GVD of up to 3400 ps/nm.
However, optical signals frequently need to be transmitted over distances for which the accumulated GVD in the fiber is substantially larger than 3400 ps/nm. A general solution for transmitting optical signals over such distances without exceeding the allowed dispersion penalty is to insert dispersion-compensating modules periodically along the optical transmission fiber. However, these dispersion-compensating modules are generally expensive and also increase the overall transmission loss in the system significantly. Alternatively, one may pre-distort the launched signals in the transmitter in such a way that the GVD in the dispersive fiber transforms them into the desired waveform required for error-tree detection at the receiver. This technique is known as electrical pre-compensation of the transmitted signals. However, such pre-compensation typically requires the use of an additional optical modulator in the transmitter, which also increases the cost and complexity of the system substantially.
It is well known to those skilled in the art that pre-compensation of the transmitted optical signals can substantially improve the distance over which the signals can be transmitted without requiring intermediate dispersion-compensating modules. However, electrical pre-compensation of signals in conventional modulation formats, such as on-off-keyed or phase-keyed signals in NRZ or RZ format, requires independent modulation of the optical amplitude and phase of the transmitted signal, and hence, two optical modulators that are driven by two independent electrical signals.
Alternatively, one may employ a directly modulated laser source together with an external modulator. Whereas in principle, such transmitters can pre-compensate arbitrarily large amounts of GVD, they tend to be expensive and consume substantially more electrical drive power than conventional optical transmitters because of additional electrical circuitry required for operating the two modulators. Therefore, transmitters generating electrically pre-compensated signals also add substantial cost and complexity to the system. This disadvantage is particularly important in systems where the accumulated GVD in the transmission fiber is only moderately larger than the dispersion tolerance of optical signals without pre-compensation.